


Sidequest

by ballonlea



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, super fluffy, tsuzuru makes an appearance too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballonlea/pseuds/ballonlea
Summary: Masumi had an on-going list in his head about things he knew for sure about everyone in the dorm. For example, he knew that Citron was really good at telling stories, and he knew that Tsuzuru would probably die if Masumi wasn’t there to keep him alive, and he knew that the director was the kindest, most beautiful person in the entire world.Andhe knew that if Itaru approached him with a certain look on his face, he was about to be dragged into something he really didn’t want to do.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru & Usui Masumi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 107





	Sidequest

**Author's Note:**

> note: this takes place after the kniroun play, though there are no major spoilers. some things just might not make sense if you have no idea what kniroun is, though!
> 
> please enjoy!!!

It happened on a Tuesday night, when Masumi, for some reason, was still awake around midnight. It wasn’t really like him to be awake so late; he never really had homework that took him this long to do (since he always did his early so he could show Izumi how dedicated he was), and practices always ended well before midnight (even if he sometimes stayed a little past the ending time to ask Izumi some questions about how he could improve). He just couldn’t sleep, really, which was the  _ worst,  _ because he’d be extra sleepy tomorrow morning, even with Sakuya’s wake-up call. 

And he’d actually been on his way to Sakuya’s room—not to see Sakuya, though. He’d heard that Citron knew how to make a super-special milk tea that’d perk anyone up—

Except Hisoka. They’d learned that through many,  _ many  _ attempts.

—and he was about to go ask if Citron would make it for him the next morning. But the very minute he stepped out of his room, he heard Itaru call his name.

“Masumi! Perfect timing,” he said. He was half-looking at Masumi and half-looking at his phone, which was playing some kind of sickly sweet music. “Are you free on Saturday?”

Masumi didn’t say anything. When it came to someone as weird as Itaru, it was better to just let him talk until all the twists and turns were out in the open.

“There’s this event I really wanna go to, but I’d look way too weird if I went by myself,” Itaru said. He tapped a few buttons on his phone, and some girl’s voice told him he was doing a great job. “So I figured it’d be less weird if I went as the clueless big bro taking my super cute little bro. BTW, you’re still my little bro. I have your picture in my wallet; it’s kind of a whole thing—”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I have too many fake siblings to keep track of! I have my fake sister—”

Masumi rolled his eyes. “Not that. Why is it so important?”

At that, Itaru closed his game and started looking for something else on his phone. “Glad you asked. In short, there’s a super rare lottery that’s gonna take place, and if I don’t try, I’ll never forgive myself. It’s for a replica KniRoun prop. The long story—”

“You talk too much. I don’t need the long story.” He started to turn around, in the direction of Sakuya and Citron’s room. “Not interested.”

“Well, that’s alright. I guess I’ll just take Izumi instead.”

_ That  _ was what really made alarm bells go off in Masumi’s head. There was absolutely no chance he’d let someone like Itaru get close to her. On a scale of one to ten, measuring worthiness for Izumi, Itaru was probably a one. Maybe even a zero. But when he was doing that cover-up act he did around outsiders, then he was definitely an 11, and that was so far into the danger zone that Masumi would rather sacrifice his Saturday than subject Izumi to that.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

“Perfect!” Itaru grinned, like he’d actually won something better than Masumi’s company. “Be ready early, okay? We gotta be in line as fast as possible.”

Masumi didn’t say anything. He’d be ready when he was ready, but he cared about sleep more than Itaru’s stupid event.

“Besides, if you’re ready super early, then I’ll put in a good word for you with Izumi. About how dedicated and punctual you are…” Itaru trailed off. “I can tack on more adjectives if you’re ready before I am.”

Masumi prickled at that. “Don’t use her as leverage.”

Itaru sighed. “I’ll give you five thousand yen.”

“...I’ll be ready.”

True to his word, Masumi was ready as early as Itaru had asked him to be, and they made it to the event venue with perfect timing. And the event venue was totally awesome, BTW, because it wasn’t even a KniRoun-exclusive expo, but there were so many different KniRoun booths that Itaru’s mind was spinning. Never in his life had he ever felt so limited by his paycheck, and that was coming from someone who had emptied his savings whaling for the first Lancelot SSR to show up in the mobile game.

...To be fair, it wasn’t  _ all  _ of his savings, but it was a bigger chunk than he’d like to admit to.

Despite looking like he was bored out of his mind, Masumi wasn’t really complaining. He walked a little closer to Itaru whenever a cosplayer came his way, and he didn’t seem to understand the appeal at all, but Itaru had expected to hear  _ I wanna go home _ at least once by now.

Fortunately, they found the lottery booth without much trouble. Unfortunately, the actual KniRoun lottery wasn’t going to start selling tickets until a little later in the day. Ugh. Ugh! It made Itaru feel a little bad for dragging Masumi out of the dorms so early if they were just going to have to wait anyway, and he’d started to apologize for it, but Masumi just shrugged it off.

“Not like you could’ve known about it,” he said. “But now I’m hungry.”

And so the super special sidequest ‘Fill Masumi’s Hunger Bar’ began…

...Or it  _ would have _ began, if it weren’t for the fact that they turned the corner to see an  _ army  _ of capsule machines. Itaru intended to just glance through them real quick to see if they had the specific Jewel Princess set he’d been looking for, but to his surprise, it was Masumi who refused to move any further. He was standing in front of a machine filled with food mascots, and right in the middle, the label displayed the SSR prize: a small Curry Monster keychain.

Masumi was holding the five-thousand yen bill so tightly in his hand that Itaru thought it was going to disintegrate. “I’m exchanging this for coins right now.  _ Right  _ now.”

“Okay, hold on. First of all, save that for college or something. Something you actually want. I’ve got coins.” Itaru took out his wallet, handing a coin to Masumi. Ugh, Masumi sure was lucky that the JP set wasn’t there, because otherwise, Itaru would have kept all his coins to himself. “You’re getting CurryMon for the director, right? Be careful. It looks like there’s only one in there, so unless you’ve got Sakuya-level luck, you might blow all your money.”

Masumi was already putting the coin in the slot. “I’ll do whatever it takes if it means I’ll get to give this to her. But I’m gonna use the money you gave me for her eventually.”

Masumi’s aura was so intense that Itaru was holding his breath as Masumi winded the machine. A capsule fell out, with a red cap.

“Lame,” Masumi said. “That means this one isn’t it, right? In your games, the good ones are always gold.”

“First of all, I’m surprised you remember that. Second of all, you have to actually look at it to see whether or not it’s the one you want ‘cause they’re not always gold.” Itaru picked up the capsule, holding it up to his eye to see inside. “But this one isn’t CurryMon.”

Masumi looked like he deflated as soon as the words left Itaru’s mouth, and Itaru  _ really  _ didn’t want Masumi spending all of his own money on a gacha, so he handed Masumi a few more coins.

“Just try again.” Itaru pat Masumi’s shoulder. “Just think of it like this: you’ll try your best, and once you get it, we can send all the extras to Tangerine and Mika. I think they’d be happy to get a package from you,  _ and  _ Izumi would be very happy to see you sending them something.”

“...I’ll do my best,” Masumi said, straightening up. “If it’s for her, I won’t give up.”

Itaru wasn’t surprised that Masumi only heard  _ that  _ part of it, but he was glad to see him not look so sad anymore. He did the next pull with a lot more fire in his eyes, and he handed it to Itaru to check it. And repeat... And repeat... And repeat until Masumi was all out of coins, and he turned to Itaru, looking like he’d cry, if Masumi was the type to cry in front of people.

“You  _ lied _ to me.”

“I didn’t lie! You know what? Hold on, hold these. Put them in your backpack or something,” Itaru dumped the capsules he was holding into Masumi’s hands. “If we’re doing this, we’re gonna do it right.”

With that, he gave Masumi an entire handful of coins. Then, he took Masumi’s bag and set it open on the floor beneath the machine they were using.

“Ten at a time, no more, no less,” Itaru said. “You pull, give it to me, and I’ll drop it in your bag if it’s not CurryMon. We stop when we get him, and  _ only  _ when we get him.”

Ten pulls came and went. Then twenty more. They worked like a well-oiled machine, and at one point it was easier for Itaru to just hand his whole wallet over instead of having to stop to give Masumi more coins each time he ran out.

“Weren’t you hungry?” Itaru asked, around pull fifty.

“Not anymore,” Masumi said. He handed the next capsule to Itaru. “That one felt the same as the others.”

“Yeah, it’s a dupe. Do you want me to try?”

“Absolutely not,” Masumi scoffed. “I’ve seen you pathetically beg Sakuya to pull for you way too many times for this to work out for you.”

“I’m not  _ that  _ pathetic,” Itaru said, checking the next capsule. Another dupe. “Sometimes I beg Chikage-san to pull, and that’s in the privacy of our own room which, IMO, makes it a lot less pathetic.”

“You’re weird.”

Well, Itaru couldn’t argue with that.

But even though Masumi was still calling him weird, it was nice to see him so excited about something. Itaru (and the rest of the entire company, really) kind of wished he’d be able to get fired up over something that  _ wasn’t  _ Izumi, but Masumi looked so… so sleepy and uninterested about everything else that Itaru didn’t really mind if she was the only thing that woke him up. It was better than having nothing at all, and Itaru knew  _ that  _ for a fact. Even if Masumi’s whole deal was weird, Itaru would support him as much as he could. That was his duty as a stand-in older brother, after all.

The pulls were getting more and more monotonous, and Itaru was starting to wonder if CurryMon was even in there in the first place. After all,  _ some  _ places didn’t even care to make sure their blind box sets didn’t have dupes in them, so he wouldn’t put it past whoever refilled this machine to fill it without CurryMon. And Itaru was pretty sure he was running out of coins, anyway. How much did each pull cost again?

Masumi’s voice broke through Itaru’s thoughts. “I did it!”

Masumi knew the capsule was just dyed plastic, but he held it as if it were real, actual gold. Delicately, he popped off the top, extracting the keychain to make sure it was the real deal. Curry Monster stared back at him, holding a spoon in one carrot-hand and a mirror in the other. 

“Hell yeah! GJ!” Itaru ruffled Masumi’s hair. “Knew you could.”

Masumi carefully placed Curry Monster back into the capsule and tucked it away into his backpack, which was now almost completely full of all the unimportant capsules. And while his backpack felt heavier, Itaru’s wallet definitely felt lighter.

“I used all your money, though,” Masumi said, handing it back. “Sorry.”

Itaru shrugged. “I don’t really care about the cost. You got what you wanted, right? That’s what really matters.”

“But the lottery. That’s what  _ you  _ wanted.”

“Well, there’ll be others,” Itaru said. “And you didn’t use  _ all  _ my money; I’ve got a few bills in there still, so the lottery’s not totally out of the question. But we should probably get in line soon if we want a chance, and if it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. I’ll buy you dinner tonight either way, so it doesn’t matter if it’s an eat-your-feelings type of meal or a victory meal.”

Masumi nodded. He hoped Itaru would be able to get the thing he wanted, but if he couldn’t… would it be Masumi’s fault? He didn’t know, and he especially didn’t know how he was supposed to apologize if something like that happened.

The venue was a lot more crowded than it had been before they’d found the capsule machines, but Masumi managed to follow Itaru all the way back to the lottery booth without losing him. The line wasn’t super long, surprisingly, and while they waited, they sorted through all the unimportant capsules they’d acquired. Less than half of them would go to Mika and Tangerine, while the others would be either sold or given away on Itaru’s gaming channel.

“I just hit seventy-five thousand a few days ago,” Itaru said, and it seemed like he was pretty proud of himself. “It’s about time I did a giveaway.”

After a little while, the line started moving, and Itaru looked more and more like he was buzzing each time someone tried for the prop and didn’t get it. The tickets for the prop were twenty-five hundred yen apiece—a pretty hefty price. It seemed like you either pulled an O, which was a win, or an X, which meant you got a consolation prize. The consolation prizes didn’t look so bad, though, which justified the price. Masumi couldn’t tell what was a good prize or what was a bad prize, but Itaru said he was hoping for at least one loss, so they had to be pretty good.

...Maybe that was a bad thing to hope for, though, because Itaru handed the attendant every bill in his wallet only to get eleven X’s in a row. 

“Damn!” Itaru said. “Well, at least the loser prizes are still pretty cool. Where do you wanna—”

“Two tickets, please,” Masumi said, and he gave the attendant his five-thousand yen. 

“Masumi, I told you to save that!”

Masumi shrugged, and the attendant slid the tickets over to him. Right, this was the moment that they’d been waiting for. Itaru was always going on and on about the desire sensor or whatever, but surely the prize wouldn’t escape him if Masumi himself didn’t want it all that much, right? Taking a deep breath, Masumi flipped the first ticket over.

X.

“So sorry about that,” the attendant said with a smile. She looked fond, somehow. Or like she knew Masumi from somewhere. “Once you flip the other one over, I’ll let you pick your X prize.”

Masumi took a breath. Somehow, he felt shakier now than when he was trying to get the keychain for Izumi. He glanced over at Itaru, who nodded at him encouragingly, and flipped over the next ticket.

O!

“Congratulations!” The attendant said, over the groan of the line behind them. She disappeared for a moment and reappeared with the replica sword in her hands. “Here’s your prize!”

Masumi nodded, taking the sword and immediately handing it to Itaru. “I don’t want this, so you have to take it. And the X prize, too.”

“Masumi, you…!” Itaru looked like he was actually, seriously going to cry. Gross. “If you ever need anything ever, I’ll give it to you. Instantly. All you gotta do is ask.”

“I want the director’s—”

The attendant was holding out the selection of X prizes before Masumi could finish his request. Masumi picked the first one he touched, and the attendant grinned.

“You were the first actor for Gareth, weren’t you?” she asked. “It’s so nice to see the actors interested in the game.”

“Um, yeah,” Masumi said. “Thanks.”

The attendant’s statement seemed to draw a  _ lot  _ more attention towards Itaru and Masumi, and the two of them were quick to exit the venue and get into the car as quick as humanly possible. Itaru was chattering the entire way through the parking lot about the sword—how it was Lancelot’s endgame sword from KniRoun II, and how it was blessed by Gwen and was the best sword to use during the final boss fight because it refilled a certain percentage of HP each time it hit an enemy. He explained all of this like Masumi hadn’t sat there and played through the entire game when they were all preparing for the KniRoun stage play, but… It wasn’t bad to listen to. If Itaru had no problem standing by Masumi’s side while he tried to get the Curry Monster, then Masumi could stand to listen him geek out about KniRoun again.

They ended up eating at a restaurant near the dorms, where Itaru proceeded to recount the  _ entirety  _ of the KniRoun II plot, and Masumi contributed a couple of times. Whenever he could remember the plot point Itaru was talking about, anyway. And eventually, Itaru started asking him about school and about the people at school and whether or not he was having fun and how it was important to take it easy during high school. Masumi almost felt like it was wrong to take that sort of advice from someone like Itaru, but he stored it away in his mind anyway, in case he’d need it later.

It was dark by the time they  _ actually  _ got home, and Itaru ruffled Masumi’s hair again before they parted ways.

“Thanks for coming with,” Itaru said. “You’re a good kid, even if you’re weird.”

“You’re alright, I guess,” Masumi said. “Thanks for letting me get that thing.”

“Heh, no problem.” Itaru held the sword up. “It’s what Lancelot would do.”

It made Masumi roll his eyes. “Whatever.”

Masumi wasn’t surprised to see Tsuzuru working at his computer when he got into their room. It must not have been a script, though, because Tsuzuru spun around in his desk chair when Masumi closed the door behind him.

“Welcome back,” he said. “You look happy. Did something happen?”

“I got a present for Izumi today.” Masumi took the capsule out of his bag and handed it to Tsuzuru. “You can look at it, but if you take it or break it, I’ll kill you.”

Tsuzuru sighed. “Don’t kill people.”

Masumi kind of hated when Tsuzuru used that tone with him. It was almost like he was being scolded, but in a way that wasn’t really a scolding at all. 

Tsuzuru turned the keychain over in his hands. “This seems like something Itaru would have.”

“He helped me.” Masumi held his hand out. “Now give it back before you break it.”

“I’m not gonna break it,” Tsuzuru said, but he gave it back to Masumi anyway. “It’s good that you hung out with Itaru, though! I don’t think he’d say it, but I think he likes taking care of you.”

Masumi tilted his head. “That’s weird.”

“It’s not weird! I hope you told him thank you.”

Tsuzuru was using that tone again, so Masumi chose to just nod and go up to his bed. He felt a lot more tired than he thought he would be as soon as he laid down, but it was a good kind of tired. Even if he ended up waking up early tomorrow, he’d probably feel pretty good, and it probably  _ was _ because spending the day with Itaru was kind of fun.

Gross. Itaru really  _ did  _ feel like Masumi's older brother.

...Well, Masumi guessed it wasn’t that much of a bad thing, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!! i hope you liked it!!!!!! i have an agenda, and that agenda is itaru whaling for each member of spring troupe. this has a high chance of turning into a series ^__^ 
> 
> please feel free to chat with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mezzosaka)!!!!!


End file.
